The END
by OldestOfTheYoung
Summary: After reappearing on The Path, the road all Ghosts walk once entering their new lives, young Emma Steele is reintroduced to the Second World and the beings which call it their home. A darkness is threatening the many years of peace, and Emma must fight it
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I was walking. That's all I remembered from the beginning. I was walking without a care in the world, my body moving on its own as my mind tried its best to catch up. The world, as my eyes focused around me, was similar and yet completely different from how I figured it should be. It was nothing major, of course. Just a little too green here, a little bland there. It was very easy to chalk it up to a bad night's rest. Because I had to have slept and done something before I started walking, right? I didn't just start walking and never stopped. That's crazy. Ridiculous. Completely not possible. The laws of life wouldn't accept it. No one can just start walking and never stop forever, right? Of course not. So what had happened to me before I started walking? What had I done? Where had I been and who had I met? I couldn't remember any of it, but a part of me didn't find it that bad. If I couldn't remember it then it must have not been that important to me. I'm sure I would've remembered if it was. Right?

"What's your name?" someone asked me suddenly, and I looked over at the red-haired girl that was now walking beside me on the endless road I was following. She had soft brown eyes and looked completely harmless.

"I don't know." I answered, shrugging. It didn't matter much. This seemed to bother the girl a little.

"Just think. What's your name? I know you can remember it. Just try." she said, and I did. I tried my best, digging through the blankness that was my mind before I plucked a name out of it that seemed to fit.

" Steele. Emma Steele." I murmured, the name seeming like a ravish title I was giving myself.

The girl smiled brightly and nodded as if that was what she had wanted from me. "It's nice to meet you,Emma. My name is Liz. No last name."

"Why not?" I asked, a little curious. That was a strange emotion. It felt like a shoe I had lost that I had loved and had finally found.

"I just never got around to picking one out for myself." she shrugged, as if it didn't really matter. And I guessed it didn't.

"Am I dead?" I asked, looking at the space around us that looked the exact same as all the rest we had passed by already. The thought didn't really bother me that much like I thought it should, but I guess it was just because I couldn't really remember anything before this. This endless walking towards something I couldn't see no matter how far I looked in any direction.

"Yes. But it's okay. You're not alone here." she nodded sympathetically, and I looked at her in curiosity.

"But aren't you dead as well?"

"Me? Oh, well, I guess so. But I'm not a Ghost. I'm a Shade."

"What's a Shade?"

"A Ghost that can fight and Travel and vanish. I've just got more experience at being a Ghost than you since you're so new. But when you get more experienced you could become a Shade as well."

"How many of us are there?" I asked, noticing how alone we were. There was no one and nothing anywhere, so there couldn't be very many…

"Millions. Every time someone dies they come here and then when they die here they are sent back to start again. Death isn't really the end of life. It's more like a turn in the path."

"A turn in the path?" I thought aloud, and stopped walking as a fork in the dirt path I was walking on appeared ahead. One direction seemed to lead to some bright, warm light that promised safety and happiness. The other path seemed to lead to a path very similar to the one I had been walking all this time, only I could see little animals and people on it. I followed the red-haired girl, Liz, down the path without the light and warmth; the path that led to others. The path that would hopefully be able to lead to someone or somewhere that could answer my questions. Like what had happened to me before I started walking. How did I die? Was it painful? Was I alone when it happened or surrounded by friends and family? Did I have any regrets?

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><p>Okay then... Chapter one is completed, and feedback will result in a chapter two and so on... First story posted so please, be honest. I don't need things sugar-coated, but I do have a sweet-tooth. ^_^;<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes: **I swore I would make this chapter longer, but I feel like I'm rushing myself so this is it. More will definitely come sooner because I cut it off here, so expect it! Hope you like it. Note: Any characters that seem like they are stolen should be pointed out and explained from where they came from originally very clearly. Haters, I appreciate you even if I don't like you.

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><p>As Liz and I continued down the path we passed many people all doing various things, all of which were very interesting to me. Some were talking and joking around while others were trying to sell things. Liz seemed to understand my interest in all of it, but she said we had to keep going, so we did. I guessed I would be able to spend as long as I liked watching the people go about their lives (or deaths, whatever it was considered here) after we got to wherever she wanted us to go. The path under our feet never seemed to change from a dull gray stone pounded down flat after being walked on so much for so long, and as I looked to the edges of it, it seemed to come right from the soil as if it was a part of it and not manmade.<p>

"The path has always been here ever since the very beginning of time. It goes all over the Second World, connecting everything together so we can easily travel across it. Of course, battles are much easier to start because of it, but it's still nice to know that you don't have to fly or swim anywhere to get some place far away. As long as you follow the path and think clearly of your destination, you'll end up there in no time at all. No one's quite sure how, but it's one of those things you just don't worry much about." Liz explained to me, noticing my curiosity.

"Battles?" I asked, the word catching on the edge of my mind like a snagged piece of string. I had no idea why, but this word caused me great unrest and made me a little jittery.

"Yeah. There are three distinct races on the Second World. There's us, the Shades, then there is the Elves and the Beasts. The Elves and the Beasts fight _a lot _because they share a boundary line that is connected right on the path, but it's really nothing serious. Just little fights here and there. The Elves' Elders are smart enough to know that starting a war with the Beasts is not the best thing to do, and the Beasts really just don't want to be bothered at all." she shrugged, beginning to warm up to telling me about the world around us. "Each of the three Major Races kind of agrees that peace is important, so when anything too bad happens to one of them the other ones usually help out if they can. Like, when the Darkness almost completely wiped out the Elves. That was a huge battle, and the Elves wouldn't have won had it not been for us Shades stepping in a teaching the Darkness a thing or two."

"The Darkness," I murmured, the name or title sending shivers through me. That was a bad name; an evil name.

"We Shades rule this part of Second, so you won't see too many Elves or Beasts here. Everyone pretty much knows that it's best to stay behind their own borders, even the traders. Of course, the path makes doing that a little hard, since to go anywhere you almost always have to pass by at least one of the other Territories." Liz continued, shaking her head as if the thought was slightly troubling but not that alarming. She acted as if this was normal, all of this strangeness, and I supposed it was. It was my fault it seemed so confusing since I was such a new person in this abnormal place.

"Where are we going?" I asked, looking ahead and seeing nothing but what looked like a mound of stones close to the same color as the path. It was huge, like a small mountain, and had a bunch of little openings on it that looked suspiciously like _windows_.

"That there is the Institute. It's a school of sorts for Shades. No place safer on Second besides six feet under, and even then you aren't on Second anymore." she smiled, gazing fondly at the mound of stone we were headed towards.

"Are you trying to tell me that that mound of rocks is a building?" I asked, my confusion overriding my instinct to be polite.

"It is an ugly place, isn't it?" she laughed, not sounding at all insulted. "That place has survived more wars than in the text books, you know. She's been around since the beginning. She's even older than Rodric!"

"Who's Rodric?" I asked, jogging after her as she skipped up to the biggest door I had ever seen anywhere. It too looked to be made of the gray stone, but with just a touch she was able to get it to open wide enough for us to get through.

"He's our neighborhood Immortal."

"Wait another minute. Did you say he is an Immortal?" I asked, my mind finding that hard to understand. If this was a place you went to after death, then didn't that mean that by definition everyone had to die at some point?

"Exactly!" she grinned, seeing my confused expression. "Everyone that comes to Second comes because they have died. It's simple like that. But instead of dying here and returning to wherever they came from, a few folk just never die. They get to an age that seems kind of high, like say 50-something, and then they just stop aging. Most Immortals knock themselves off after a while, but Rodric says he's never even considered it. He says it's his job to record everything that happens so he can tell the next generations about it. Like the world's biggest, oldest history book. He's pretty cool once you get past the fact that his eyes make you feel like he's looking into your Soul, though." she explained patiently, leading me into a huge cavern-like room where quite a few people were scurrying about and heading down tunnels that seemed to branch off in every direction opposite the huge door.

"How long has he been alive?" I asked, a little impressed by the old guy. If I had to live forever I wasn't sure I would be able to handle it that well like he had.

"From what I've been able to get out of him he was just a teenager when the very first Dark War broke out. That was before Shades he says, so it was a long time ago. Like, hundreds of years."

"Dark War?"

"Ever since people started to come here after dying it hasn't always been all peaceful and controlled. Some say the Darkness was here before us and we intruded, but most believe the Darkness came to act as kind of an equilibrium so everything was more fair. I mean, it sucks really, having something as dangerous as the Darkness plotting to kill us all, but it usually only strikes every few hundred years or so. And ever since the second Dark War we've always won. We lost the first, but we learned a lot about who we were fighting." she explained, and I just nodded, my mind reeling from all of the information.

How was this all even possible?


End file.
